So I'm wondering what makes dungeons hard, and I think I got it

[Nexus2089]

Consider a theoretical raid boss that picks a class every so often, Nefarian style, and marks a certain ability. For Druids, we'll say it's HEALING TOUCH, because...noone cares about healing touch. If any of the druids in your raid use that ability, the raid blows up. Instantly. No question, nothing, the raid blows up.

Now let's make it a relatively useful ability. All of a sudden, Mages can't Fireball or Frostbolt. Yeah, it's a punching-frost-in-face move, but it's not really what we're concerned about, we just need a move classes like to use regularly. But still; use it, the raid blows up, instantly.

that right there is a good raid mechanic, they should do that. it would force people to pay attention during that fight and make pugs a bitch

Oh No! Not Healing Touch!

way to not read it at all

Another part was obviously 1 person fucks up, the whole raid is fucked. One of the good examples could be, fear used to drop aggro. Warriors (being the only suitable tanks) had to stance dance to break fear (unless you were Alliance). If your offtank on Nefarian screwed up, Nef cleaved your healers/rogues/whoever he wanted and you lost.

If your referring to racials, they didnt give humans the trinket racial till BC

[Talus]

If your referring to racials, they didnt give humans the trinket racial till BC

He's referring to how Dwarf Priests were the only ones who had Fear Ward - on a 30 second CD.

man that was ridiculous....

[Keoren]

I'm not sure I'll ever understand the obsession with making WoW more difficult. How does more difficult always equal fun?

Right now I think they've hit a very good balance. Between 10 man, 25 man, and heroic versions of both, each player can find what is fun for them. Myself, I enjoy both sides to some extent. I like being able to hang out with my friends and beat a raid instance without excessive difficulty and without having to do content that's 7 months old to do so. I also enjoy working on heroic bosses (although only my 10 man group can do so at the moment) but some of the extra hard encounters do get a little boring to me wiping repeatedly for the same fuck up over and over again.

If I thought of WoW as a video game that needs to increase in difficulty as I play through it toward the ultimate goal of beating it, I'd have quit 3 years ago and have played through many, many other games in it's place. To me, WoW is a place to hang out with friends that I know both in game and IRL (some I met originally in game). I think it's important to keep a balance between difficult and fun.

For the suggestion that you should penalize 9 or 24 people for bringing their one friend who always clicks the wrong button at the right time? That's the opposite of fun. Who wants to tell their best friend IRL he can't come to raid anymore because he always blows everyone up?

Overcoming challenges is fun for many. I do symphatize with your point, but please take into consideration the other point of view too. Ideally there's a good progression curve with the last hard modes being really difficult. If you raid to have fun with friends without having to bang your head against the wall, normal modes have been designed for that (and probably the earlier hard modes too).

[LeperHerring]

So, if you want hard content, here is the challenge for you and your guild.

-Don't go on the ptr/mmo/wowwiki etc and look up the boss strats. Figure out the fights as a group, as you go, on live.
-Take out omen. Yes you read that right.
-Take out the myriad of class timers/cast timers etc. Learn to watch your procs, manage your cooldowns, etc.
-figure out your own spec/glyphs/gems/gear/rotation. Don't just head over to ej and cut and past to your character. Experiment, ask other players what they do, test things out, do some math
-start with the hard modes

If you want harder content, don't make it so easy on yourselves.

And while you're at it, don't enchant or gem your gear, only bring 20 people, and don't wear any pants. Seriously, I don't want to have to handicap myself in the ways you describe. I want fights that are so challenging that I need to do everything possible to beat them.

[Fenixdown]

And while you're at it, don't enchant or gem your gear, only bring 20 people, and don't wear any pants. Seriously, I don't want to have to handicap myself in the ways you describe. I want fights that are so challenging that I need to do everything possible to beat them.

Do heroic ICC when it's released. I am sure your challenge will lie there.

If not, then I'm sorry my friend, but the times have changed and Blizzard is actually finally giving the majority a chance to see a final boss. Let's all enjoy it together and be happy!

[Catta]

they allrdy made a boss like this... hm who was it... oh yes the guy who destroyed dalaran

ARCHIMONDE!

he was the reason most guilds got cleaned up their guilds due to the inability to kill him if a person screwed up... lets get this again..

kaythanksbai!!!11!1!One!1!ELEVEN!1

[Pozz]

The thing that actually made raid bosses more difficult in vanilla was, in one simple term, RNG.

Take Vael. He randomly targets someone in the raid, that person blows up and dies unavoidably. He also systematically killed tanks, and if you didn't DPS fast enough, the tanks all got creamed and that was it. It was a gear check, but even people that had Vael on farm and were clearing BWL every night would sometimes wipe on Vael.

The only reason for that was the RNG of the bomb. It was extremely possible for 5 healers in a row to get blown up. Maybe all your best DPS blew up. If stuff like that happened, you wiped on Vael. It doesn't matter if you were regularly surpassing the "You will lose if you don't kill him in 3 minutes" mark by killing him in 1 min and 30 seconds, if you lost too many healers or too many good dps, it was over.

Another part was obviously 1 person fucks up, the whole raid is fucked. One of the good examples could be, fear used to drop aggro. Warriors (being the only suitable tanks) had to stance dance to break fear (unless you were Alliance). If your offtank on Nefarian screwed up, Nef cleaved your healers/rogues/whoever he wanted and you lost.

The third pretty prevalent part was that the bosses just hit harder and did more damage. They fucked you up harder. They were gear checks. Lots and lots of gear checks.

There were some pretty intense strategies, but they mostly involved 1. knowing how to survive when RNG ate your face 2. no one ever fucking up 3. everyone being very well geared.

I remember Twin Emps, on my hunter, I had to escort the melee back and forth with AotP when the switch happened. If I didn't do that, we didn't get enough DPS down, and we lost.

Also, in regards to rep grinds/attunments/not opening bosses until a certain time, every single boss has basically been killed 1 day or half a day or a day and a half after it became available. I've looked it up before. Unfortunately, my little notepad is on my other computer, but if you're willing to look it up, it's pretty accurate. The "omg hardmode blah was already beaten by w.eguildamg it's too easy!" effect has been happening since vanilla, for real. MC and Ony were released with the game, so the kill dates for them are obv a bit farther away from the release date than, say, BWL bosses.

But yeah. Raids WERE harder in vanilla. The reason was because you needed 40 people who didn't fuck up, you needed to gear ALL of those idiots, and you needed to hope real hard that luck was in your favor.

Oh yeah, it was also possible to stack buffs like no one's business, so the guilds that had an edge were the ones whose members were willing to farm mats noooonstop. Tanks used to farm Felwood for tubers in those days.

Add to the list less no brain healing spells like PoM, Circle of Healing and Wild Growth (I play a holy priest myself :P) and the overall increase in different healing spells available. These have trivalized encounters immensely and it's hard to design an encounter where you don't have one or two healers with abilities making them outstanding in said encounter.

[Fenixdown]

Add to the list less no brain healing spells like PoM, Circle of Healing and Wild Growth (I play a holy priest myself :P) and the overall increase in different healing spells available. These have trivalized encounters immensely and it's hard to design an encounter where you don't have one or two healers with abilities making them outstanding in said encounter.

I think you have vanilla confused with BC. BC made spells trivial. I mean, BT with 4 holy priests was the easiest raid ever designed. "Oh look, CoH the raid, we win. Yay.". Back in vanilla, sure you had fewer spells at your disposal, but downranking made mana conservation far easier.

I don't know about you, but I would rather have spell variety over 6 buttons of Flash Heal and healing macros that do the work for me (if you played in vanilla, you know the one). Or having completely worthless spells like Lolwell (which, thank GOD, they made FAR better now), which was useful for one or two total encounters at best.

I have to respectfully disagree with your statement. The nerfs to CoH and Wild Growth actually made things better now than they were ever in the past. No longer do we have the days of "one button healing". I much prefer the way it is now to last expansion, and I know several ehalers who prefer it now to what it was in the "godd ol' days".

[Danner]

What you are saying is that the "Donkey Kong effect" made fights harder.

The Donkey Kong effect is my guild leader's description of talking about how easy it is to make an unrepairable mistake by doing a really simple taks. Like the cratering incidents on Archimonde or the random dropping of voidzones in the raid on Deconstructor Hardmode. Or an even better example: the ledge boss of sunwell.

The idea is simple. Have 40 people do a simple task. Someone is bound to screw up in a hilarious manner that will wipe the raid. Like walking up to a ledge and not falling down. Or failing to click a cube after listening to 18 people screaming to click it on VT. Or not facing yogg saron in phase 3. Or blowing up the raid on solarian. It's something that's really easy to avoid - like the barrels on donkey kong - but once you have many enough people doing it, someone is bound to fail.

This is the reason 10man raids are so much easier than 25man raids. In a 10 man raid, you bring your 10 best guildies and steamroll any content. Every now and then, someone will fail something simple, but it doesn't happen often. On a 25 man raid, failing happens 2.5x as often, and recovery time will take longer since someone will invariably use the chance to take an extended toilet break. In 40 man vanilla raids, failures happened 4x as often. And recovery took at least 4x as long.

Next time; have every person on your server walk over Thandol Bridge. Falling down said bridge takes a serious amount of fail. Yet I can guarantee you that at least 3-4 people will accomplish the feat, without trying to. That's the donkey kong effect.

[Leidus]

Overcoming challenges is fun for many. I do symphatize with your point, but please take into consideration the other point of view too. Ideally there's a good progression curve with the last hard modes being really difficult. If you raid to have fun of friends without having to bang your head against the wall, normal modes have been designed for that (and probably the earlier hard modes too).

Yes. This I realize. I even covered that WoW currently has a great balance between easier, fun raids and challenging progression raids, and that I enjoy both to some extent.

I guess I just assumed this thread was a more well thought out version of "omg WoW is too easy make it harder noobs have my epix".

We are on the same page.

[Marithas]

multitasking (moving out of ____ and dpsing)
high damage expectations
high healing expectations

[draticus]

When wow works perfectly you can expect players to be perfect. Until then the whole raid would wipe every time someone lagged or the server hiccuped. Wow should probably still be in beta with as many bugs and flaws as it has. If the whole raid wiped every time someone failed at the Heigan dance then getting past him would be more about luck than skill.

[draticus]

If the goal is to allow everyone the chance of seeing content while still giving cutting edge guilds enough of a challenge to not clear new content the first week then I see only one solution.

The challenge needs to be about how quickly you clear the content rather than whether you ever clear it. If each new raid dungeon offered a significant jump in gear ilvl then the difficulty of completely clearing the content is a factor of how long you've been running it.

Basically, the first boss of new content will be about as hard as the last boss of old content but drop significantly better gear. Each boss grows in difficulty making it harder and harder to keep clearing unless you've gotten a significant amount of upgrades from the previous bosses. The last boss would be impossible to clear in the previous dungeons gear but not very difficult if you're FULLY decked in the current dungeons gear(which would take a long time obviously). So the bragging rights are all about how many weeks it took you to down the last boss.

Cutting edge guilds might be able to get him down the 3rd or 4th week and then get enough gear to start on hard modes shortly after. Casual guilds would eventually be able to clear the instance and see all of the content.

You could also offer mounts, pets, achievements based on how quickly content was cleared. All hard modes would be tuned for players with all of the current content gear so that cutting edge guilds would still have something to work on even after clearing the last boss.

[LeperHerring]

Do heroic ICC when it's released. I am sure your challenge will lie there.

If not, then I'm sorry my friend, but the times have changed and Blizzard is actually finally giving the majority a chance to see a final boss. Let's all enjoy it together and be happy!

Where did I say there is no challenge? Where did I say I don't want everyone to have a chance to see the final boss?

Suggesting that people go straight to hard modes demonstrates that you have no clue about how end-game raiding works. That's fine, you're a casual and you like the content. But why are the people who are more skilled or play more than you not allowed to have content that they enjoy?

[Fenixdown]

Where did I say there is no challenge? Where did I say I don't want everyone to have a chance to see the final boss?

Suggesting that people go straight to hard modes demonstrates that you have no clue about how end-game raiding works. That's fine, you're a casual and you like the content. But why are the people who are more skilled or play more than you not allowed to have content that they enjoy?

I don't ever recall saying that a. I was a casual raider, nor b. that hardcores aren't "allowed" to enjoy the content.

I made a statement based on your post, which was "why should I gimp myself to have a challenge". If you wish for the challenge early, go do the hard modes earlier. That's just how the system works. If you want to work your way up to it, then work your way up. That's how the system works. If you want to enjoy what your guild can handle because you actually like playing with them, then you enjoy what everyone can handle. That's how the system works.

The challenge is there. If you acknowledge that there is one, then why complain about no challenges? I can only go based off your post that your mindset is on "the game is too easy and casuals ruined WoW". If you don't feel that way, don't come off with that tone. It's not hard to form a sentence that doesn't come off in a condescending demeanor.

I am confident Icecrown will present challenges in normal for casual raiders. I am also confident hardcore guilds will blow through it's wall and find their challenges in the heroic modes. Why? Because it's how the system now works. Blizzard wants this to be epic for everyone to enjoy, casual and hardcore alike.

Beyond which, it's not even being PTRed. I am sure in the end you will be happy, as will I.

Oh, and I've been raiding now for over 4 years. Yes, I am quite familiar with how raiding works. You get the challenges you are faced with, and you overcome them in various ways. Exploitation, class-stacking, or just "winging it" and keeping your fingers crossed. If you want the absolute hardest challenge you can get, you go straight for the hardest thing you can find and try your luck. If you don't succeed, it means you are likely not ready for that challenge. That's not just in this game, that's in any RPG. Of which I've been playing RPGs in general for FAR longer than WoW has been in existence.

My theory is heroic ICC will be your Sunwell 2.0. Normal will be casual's BT. Most will clear normal, and the uberelite will clear heroic. If it doesn't turn out that way, then I am sorry. Blizzard did not live up to your previous expectations, and there is nothing that I, nor you, nor the rest of the community can really do about it except accept it and move on or quit playing. In the end, that's always the choice everyone has. I prefer acceptance, because I just like playing the game. Your choice is yours to make.

[Pozz]

I think you have vanilla confused with BC. BC made spells trivial. I mean, BT with 4 holy priests was the easiest raid ever designed. "Oh look, CoH the raid, we win. Yay.". Back in vanilla, sure you had fewer spells at your disposal, but downranking made mana conservation far easier.

I don't know about you, but I would rather have spell variety over 6 buttons of Flash Heal and healing macros that do the work for me (if you played in vanilla, you know the one). Or having completely worthless spells like Lolwell (which, thank GOD, they made FAR better now), which was useful for one or two total encounters at best.

I have to respectfully disagree with your statement. The nerfs to CoH and Wild Growth actually made things better now than they were ever in the past. No longer do we have the days of "one button healing". I much prefer the way it is now to last expansion, and I know several ehalers who prefer it now to what it was in the "godd ol' days".

Well I didn't take into consideration the addons, I liked(like) to play it rather clean and actually decide myself. To your comment wether it might be preferable now it still doesn't make it easier to design difficult encounters as your different classes pretty much cover any aspect of damage to a single target, to the full raid or otherwise

I still consider every encounter way more trivilized and easy now than back in the days, so these days I only play for fun and to be with "friends", which in itself is okay for my side atleast.

That being said, I myself downranked, but I was all the time considering wether I should throw off rank x of spell y or rank z of the same, wether or not there was an addon that would make the decission I do not know, but I didn't use it (not bashing anyone who did btw)

[Banjooie]

Yes. This I realize. I even covered that WoW currently has a great balance between easier, fun raids and challenging progression raids, and that I enjoy both to some extent.

I guess I just assumed this thread was a more well thought out version of "omg WoW is too easy make it harder noobs have my epix".

We are on the same page.

I'm less interested in 'OMG MAKE IT HARDER' so much as 'well, if you /did/ make it harder, how WOULD you make it harder?' I hear a lot of people complaining it's not difficult enough, but I was just really interested in a thread where we discussed what would make it harder.

Gonna put this in bold, actually.

The question of 'Should WoW Be Harder' *ASIDE*, if we were to make it harder what sort of things would we do?

I mean, personally, as a guy sitting in, um, well, I think I might almost be good enough for Ulduar 10 whooooooooaaa I'm probably going to end up not even seeing the inside of Trials of the Crusader. I'm personally okay with that.

It's more along the lines of 'can you actually make a raid so hard it will not be cleared in two weeks, and if so, how would you?'

[notasgudasyou]

ctrl + c sunwell, paste into ICC, make bosses hit for 83k on plate, win?

[Vulcanreborn]

ctrl + c sunwell, paste into ICC, make bosses hit for 83k on plate, win?

that sounds like a blizzard conference they should hire you!

[notasgudasyou]

nah i'd like wtfbbqpwn them too much... too gud 4 bliz...